


i'll find a new place to be from

by mistyheartrbs



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Another one!, Endgame Clarke Griffin/Lexa, F/F, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 01:27:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29833926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistyheartrbs/pseuds/mistyheartrbs
Summary: Clarke and Lexa adjust to a different world.
Relationships: Clarke Griffin/Lexa
Comments: 2
Kudos: 30





	i'll find a new place to be from

**Author's Note:**

> knowing that it's been five years since _that_ episode...sure is something. i'm glad representation has come so far in the past five years, but there's still a long, long way to go.
> 
> title is, again, from i know the end by phoebe bridgers

Lexa flickers back into being in the way that Clarke’s grown used to. The Judge and their hivemind are equally unpredictable; one moment Clarke is teaching a composite of billions of souls the joys of fishing, the next it’s the love of her life teetering on the edge of the makeshift dock, her physical form still a surprise to them both. 

The others, for their part, don’t mind. If something is going to be weird, at least it’s a good weird, and not a horrifying weird - they’ve had enough of the latter for a lifetime. Indra and Lexa swap war stories, Echo and Niylah work with her to transcribe everything they remember of Trigedasleng in case, somehow, more humans find their way here, in a few years or a million. Raven tries to study how she works and Lexa is about as forthcoming as she can be, comparatively speaking. 

That brings them to today, Clarke watching Picasso snuffle through the dirt for a stick she’d buried there the day before when there’s that shimmering noise - she has no other words for it - and there’s _Lexa,_ expression soft, open.

“We never had dogs, in Polis,” she murmurs. Clarke turns to look at her. This will never get old, she decides; every moment between the two of them is as precious as anything. It’s an imperfect situation and one that makes her want to shake her fist at the world and beg it for a chance to start over and push Lexa out of the way of that bullet so that maybe, _maybe,_ they could’ve been together fully, there wouldn’t have been a hundred and fifty years in between, there wouldn’t have been so much pain and suffering. 

But she’ll take what she can get, and she never thought she’d see Lexa again and yet here she is, flesh and bone for as long as she’s able to manage holding off the rest of the collective, and that’s why she puts her hand on Lexa’s cheek and pulls her in and kisses her, hard. 

It feels like the universe is being reborn every time.

“I missed you,” she says, a customary greeting at this point. There’s no need for _hellos,_ nor the time for them. 

“As have I, Clarke.” Lexa pulls back, takes her in, and Clarke lets her, because she’s doing the same, cataloguing every movement in her jaw, every glow in her eyes that tells her this is Lexa and not the Judge wearing her face, as they’ve continued to do even now, for reasons Clarke will likely never understand. 

She’s making peace with it, slowly, and this entire world is something she never could have imagined. This is Lexa as surely as the sun shines overhead. 

“We didn’t have dogs on the Ark, either,” Clarke muses, returning to the initial conversation, still holding Lexa’s hand, each ridge of her skeletal glove pressing into Clarke’s own fingers. “Until her, I thought they’d all died out or gone feral.” 

“Yet you keep her around.” Lexa doesn’t move, not yet - still probably getting used to the _being,_ her own presence in the world around her. Even without the formal title, she was still the Commander, still prideful. Clarke snorts a little at the thought, and then breaks into a full-on guffaw when Picasso hears (or smells) the newcomer and tackles her to the ground, licking her face like she’s never seen a person before.

“She likes you.” 

“What is she _doing?”_ Lexa wriggles beneath the beast’s furry mass as her warpaint smears beneath Picasso’s slobber. 

“It’s how she shows affection.” 

“Horrible.” Lexa pushes herself back to the log, still shaky, and scoots back, glaring daggers at Picasso. “Perhaps you should be more wary of this one. I think it’s capable of more than you think.”

Picasso responds by eating a scrap of moss. 

“Come on,” Clarke says, standing up and offering Lexa a hand. The gesture and the position ricochet her back to another time, another Earth, and the memory is so strong that Clarke’s almost knocked to her knees herself. “They’ll start wondering where we are.”

Lexa takes her hand and stands up, and they’re at eye level with each other, and Clarke wants to kiss her again. 

***

Enough time has passed that the Commander’s presence is not a surprising one anymore - Raven, for her part, barely looks up from her workstation - and yet Clarke still gets a small thrill from just walking to their little space with her, hand-in-hand, nothing at all owed to a grand and nebulous and terrible _people,_ just an uncomplicated love for this motley group she can call her family. 

Lexa does not have her own cabin or her own bed, for reasons less to do with the temporary state of her visits and much more to do with the fact that she doesn’t want them. Hence the waggled eyebrows on Murphy’s part, the immediate punch to the shoulder from Octavia. They’d all decided to stick by the beach, mostly because it was where they’d ended up and it was beautiful and they all deserved to wake up to something like that, and in the months that’d followed the Transcendance the lean-tos had given way to something of a cobbled-together organization of little houses. 

It was home. It was theirs. Clarke waves to everyone before heading into her own hut, covered as it is on the inside by sketches and a lump of furs on the floor for the nights when Raven’s nightmares begot her need to share them with someone. Lexa follows.

“You’ve redecorated,” she says, voice neutral.

“It didn’t feel right to just keep them in a pile.” Clarke sits down on her bed and just looks at her, the way she’s done so many times since the Transcendance and in a way she hopes to do for years and years and years to come, and she feels her heart loosen.

“It’s nice.” Lexa sits down next to her, close enough that their shoulders are touching. Clarke holds her hand again. It feels like taking a breath after a lifetime underwater. 

“Thanks.” Clarke pauses, listens to the wind in the trees outside. “You’re going back soon, aren’t you?”

“I have been able to…improve my control over this form, somewhat. Stay here for longer increments of time. But it isn’t easy.” She deflates a little. Clarke wants to hold her, and she does. Lexa is firm in her arms, warm and breathing and _here._ “I’ll be back.”

“I know.” And she does.

“We could have used dogs in combat, if we’d known they still existed.” The musing comes out of nowhere, and Clarke smiles into it. “Perhaps, if things had been different…”

“Don’t say that.” Clarke Griffin: many things, a hypocrite one of them. How many times had she run through every decision of her adult life and wondered what she could've done? But she refused to waste time on pointless thought exercises. “You’re here now.” 

“So focused.” Lexa runs her thumb over Clarke’s cheek. The gesture is so small, so intimate, that it makes Clarke want to cry. “You would have made a great Commander.”

“I’m not sure about that.” 

“We’re here, aren’t we?” Lexa smiles her confident little half-smile that makes Clarke fall in love all over again. “Like you said.”

“Yeah.” It’s not the most eloquent thing anyone has ever said, but it’s honest, and Lexa kisses her again, and she’s so gentle and spectacular at once, a supernova of a woman, and Clarke lets herself be swept up in her. 

“You’re…” Lexa trails off, hands kneading the mattress, her gaze downward a little bit. Still nervous, even now.

“I love you,” Clarke says, without hesitation, without desperation, simply as a statement, something that needs to be known. 

Lexa looks at her, then, and the world tilts like it's never moved before.

**Author's Note:**

> this one's sort of a sequel to my last clexa fic - they're happy together, i'm manifesting it.


End file.
